


Kick back.

by thebuttercupsareblind



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C, Friends Being Pals, Friendship Tags Do Not Equal Moirailleigance, Not betad, Playing Minecraft, Post-Canon, give me my rare friendships or give me death, talking about feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-05
Updated: 2019-03-05
Packaged: 2019-11-12 03:57:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18003368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebuttercupsareblind/pseuds/thebuttercupsareblind
Summary: “Snacks,” Dirk says. “You want some? Gamer etiquette suggests that Doritos is the way to go, but we’ve got some discount-goldfish hanging around.”“Gamer etiquette, oh my God,” Jade snorts.





	Kick back.

The doorbell rings. It’s the sound of a gun firing. Not an actual gun, of course, that’d set Dirk scrambling for his sword everytime Jane visited. It’s a sound effect from an old, old game that Jake had enjoyed. It plays multiple times, in different pitches, like a little tune. At first, Dirk was not used to it, and even now, he tenses at the noise.

But he’s expecting a visitor. His automatic stiffness doesn’t last long. His steps are silent across the floor, but he stands tall. As tall as Dirk Strider can possibly be, anyway. Katana sheathed, nestled in his ready strife specibus, just in case, he opens the door.

He’s greeted to a grinning dog girl, teeth sharp and ears perked. “Hi!”

For being Jake’s, she doesn’t look a lot like him. He muses over the fact for only a moment, because there’s only a little gap between opening the door and looking like a staring idiot. “Hey.” 

They stand there, for a few seconds, but Jade’s smile doesn’t fade. “Can I come it?” 

Shit. “Yeah.” Dirk stands to the side, and closes the door when Jade walks in. “Living room’s to your left.” 

“Thanks for inviting me over. Dave and Karkat are on a big mushy date and I would’ve been so bored.” Jade walks swiftly, and Dirk trails behind her. 

The living room’s been cleaned up, mostly, but there’s still shit strewn over the ground. A few puppets here and there. A blanket. Some wires. Jade doesn’t seem to mind.

“Can I be real with you?” Dirk asks. 

“Yeah! Of course. Friends are supposed to be real with eachother.” Jade ventures near the couch, and, with a gesture from Dirk, sits. “What’s up?”

“This is, mostly, the fault of Jake and Rose.” Dirk doesn’t want misunderstandings. If Jade’s going to dislike that he didn’t invite her over of his entire will, then he wants to know. 

But she shows no negative reaction. At all. Nothing more than a small huff of amusement. “I know. Rose told me how useless you are at this stuff. To be honest I’d been meaning to have some kind of time with you myself! But I kinda forgot about it whenever I thought about it.” She hums. “No offense?” 

“None taken. Were you aiming to do something in particular with me?”

“I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

Dirk’s eyebrows raise. At first, at the end of the game, any and all facial expressions he made would be controlled. Over time, though, shit like this has become involuntary. 

“I was thinking,” Dirk says, “that we could kick back and play some Minecraft.” 

“Alright!” Jade’s smile is unable to hide the confusion that comes next. “What’s Minecraft?” 

“You’re kidding.” 

She’s not kidding. That’s genuine confusion written on her face. This is exactly what happened with Dave, Dirk recalls. Of course Jade doesn’t know what Minecraft is. 

Dirk gives her a brief synopsis and Jade’s instantly interested. At the mention of building whatever comes to mind, Jade makes an awed sound, and when Dirk adds that wolves can be tamed, Dirk notices that white tail of hers gently smacking the couch. 

Dirk doesn’t know how Minecraft was remade, block for block, on this planet. Crazy coincidences, he figures, like the recreation of Vine and the return of Nyan Cat. He makes short work of booting Minecraft up on this planet’s phaux Xbox and goes to sit next to Jade when he freezes.

“Snacks,” he says.

“Snacks?” Jade repeats. 

“Snacks.” He says. 

“Snacks!” She repeats.

“Snacks,” Dirk says. “You want some? Gamer etiquette suggests that Doritos is the way to go, but we’ve got some discount-goldfish hanging around.” 

“Gamer etiquette, oh my God,” Jade snorts. “I can’t hear you say that and not go for the Doritos!” 

“Sweet. Stay there.” 

“I’m not going anywhere else!” 

Dirk speedwalks out of the room, and, once out of Jade’s line of sight, ditches the floor and floats into the kitchen. Huh. It’s dark. He and Jake must have forgotten to open the curtain. He navigates through the dark obtains the Doritos. The peak gamer fuel. The only gaming fuel.

Dirk wonders how Jade can smile like that without her cheeks hurting. Her grin is certainly wider when he returns with the sustenance. He hands her the entire bag of Doritos and sits. Close, but not too close. Close enough that he can touch her, if she wants, but not close enough that their shoulders are touching. 

Of course, Dirk’s efforts are thwarted when he finds out that Jade is a very touchy girl. 

Not in a weird way, but enough for Dirk to notice it. A shoulder bump when she jokes, a grip on his arm when he starts the game, a pat on the back when he makes an admittedly stiff joke. He’d be uncomfortable if he weren’t used to similar shenanigans from Jake.

“So,” Jade says, trailing behind Dirk’s character, “we can build whatever we want?”

“Whatever we want.” Jade’s still clumsy with the controls, so Dirk has to stop every few seconds to wait for her to catch up.

“I could build a giant dog?”

“If you have the materials.” 

Both Rose and Dave have told Dirk that Jade’s not the best with videogames. 

It doesn’t seem to be the case for Minecraft.

Even with her slippery grip on the controls, she quickly catches on to how the game works and how to make use of its mechanics. She’s gone some natural skill with building things. By the time Dirk’s dug a hole into a hill for his base, Jade’s well into making a wooden house. 

Her only weakness is the night, when neither of them have beds and Jade still isn’t the best with the controls. Luckily for her, Dirk’s a master with the Minecraft sword. 

“So, where’s Jake?” Jade asks, narrowly escaping death by skeleton without so much as a surprised sound. 

“Filming advertisements.” Dirk’s answer is only met with the crunching of chips. 

Of all the things that Dirk’s learned today, he’s most pleased to find that conversation with Jade is incredibly easy. The conversation slides from Jake into casual chitchat of recent events, but Jade carries the majority of the talking. It doesn’t seem to bother her, and it certainly doesn’t bother Dirk. 

“You know, for all that talk about gamer food, you haven’t had any yet,” Jade comments, barrelling straight down a cave with no fear.   
“I guess not,” Dirk hums, opting to stay on the surface and make a farm. 

Dirk’s half-expecting a lecture, but nothing comes. Of course. Jade doesn’t know of his eating habits, so why would she?

The conversation shifts. 

Guardians just happens to be the topic. 

Jade talks about Bec, and how Bec parented, and how she’s part Bec and haha isn’t that weird? Old Grandpa Jake is not brought up. 

“Say,” Jade says, “I don’t think I ever heard about your Bro. What was he like?” 

“I wouldn’t know. He died long before SBURB dumped my baby ass into the ocean.” Only once the sentence is finished does Dirk realise that Jade looks a little uncomfortable. The mention of the game, maybe? 

“Yeah, I know that. Surely you know what he was like, though?” 

“He was a director.” Dirk doesn’t look at Jade. “And fought despite the inevitable demise of the entirety of humanity. Never cried uncle.” He shrugs. “There’s nothing more to say. I don’t think an exposition dump on his life is what you’re looking for.” 

“Mhm. But he must’ve known you were coming, right? And wanted to care for you?” She’s genuinely curious, it seems. 

But Dirk’s mouth starts running before he thinks. “No. I was stealing his resources, if anything. He didn’t give them to me. Maybe there was a sense of obligation, of pity, or…” He trails off. 

Jade eyes him. 

“Yeah.” Dirk takes a breath. “When I start talking like that, tell me to cut the shit. For future reference. Telling you now so that I don’t have to say it later.” 

“Why?”

“Therapist says that it’s not a good way of thinking. All the obligation bullshit.” 

Jade’s little dog ears prick up. “Oh, you go to therapy?” 

Dirk fully expects the conversation to take a crazy harsh nosedive into the city of Wow, This Is Fucking Uncomfortableopolis, but it doesn’t. Jade doesn’t probe too much, and doesn’t seem to judge. 

The conversation is so rudely interrupted by a creeper, which ends up blowing the hell out of Jade. Her side of the split screen goes red, and she leans back with a whine.

“Aw, man.” Jade crosses her arms. “That sucks!” 

“Happens to every gamer at least once. So, congratulations, you’re an official Minecraft gamer.” Dirk adds, “I’ll grab your loot before it hits up a despawn.” 

Jade doesn’t respawn. She starts floating instead, resting her head on a hand. “What were you saying?” 

“Hm?” Dirk says. “Oh. Yeah.” He straightens up on the couch and clears his throat. “I used to feel empty, for lack of a better descriptor. Wasn’t normal. I’m working on it, though. Working shit out.” 

Jade seems satisfied with that, floating so that her feet point towards the ceiling. 

And, for a moment, they’re quiet. Nothing but the sounds of Dirk’s Goku Minecraft skin running across the expanse of a blocky cave. Jade doesn’t grab the controller to respawn. The bag of Doritos lays, mostly raided, next to Dirk. 

Jade ends the silence with, “it’s normal to feel a little empty sometimes though, right? A little bit of empty is okay.”

Her words make Dirk stiffen, and the pat of Dirk’s Minecraft player running across stone ceases. Dirk doesn’t look up at her, but he quirks an eyebrow. “Elaborate.” 

“Even when I was a kid there were little bits of emptiness, you know?” Dirk does know, but he waits for her to continue. “Sometimes feelings were just kind of muted. Or I’d swallow them? Sometimes instead of being sad I’d just be empty. Kept me from crying! Which is good!

“That’s not really the entirety of it. I’m having trouble explaining. But a little bit of empty is alright. There’s a lot more empty now, but it’s… better than being sad, I think. Helps me keep my chin up.” 

Dirk’s face, unwillingly, pulls into a grimace at her words. What the hell does he say to that?

He says nothing, for a moment. Then, “can I message you on Pesterchum later.” 

“Oh, yeah, sure!” 

“Sweet.” Dirk looks at her. “I think I’m going to give you the link to my therapist’s website.”

**Author's Note:**

> shrugging emoji i just wanted to write them and i think they would be friends


End file.
